Ex-con and jewel thief James Caan is ready to settle down with his girlfriend, but is coerced by a Mob boss to pull off one big score. But of course, one last job is rarely just one. Caan offers great control as a man who just wants to fulfill his simple dreams and thinks he is on track to realize them. There are some pretty good heist scenes, plus there’s Willie Nelson as Caan’s mentor and friend.  

On a police force full of corruption, Clifton Collins Jr. is a former gang member turned cop who, on the day he is supposed to give testimony on a shooting involving his partner Cuba Gooding Jr., has the worst day of his career. It’s not a great film, told so quickly that it’s impossible to really take in the action or the details of the plot as it unwinds, but the leads give fairly solid performances and make it somewhat worthwhile for anyone interested in their work.  

Even at young ages, Keanu Reeves and Drew Barrymore had some quality performances, so it seems like this made for television movie couldn’t really be that bad. Unfortunately it is so bad, I had mostly suppressed my memories of watching it many years ago. In what comes across as a long advertisement for the city of Cincinnati, Drew falls out of a car during a Christmas Eve snowstorm and smacks her head on a tree. When she comes to, she has landed in Toyland, a town inhabited by people who curiously look like all the people back home a la The Wizard of Oz. The whole production looks like it was filmed on an off day at a storybook themed amusement park and the actors were just told to quickly phone it in. While the rest of the film makes no mention of the holiday, Christmas is bookmarked into the story by having toymaker Pat Morita morph into Santa Claus.    

In the distant future, Sean Connery is an enforcer whose job it is to make sure other Brutals are toiling to provide food for the privileged Eternals. Hitching a ride on the giant Zardoz head that moves between the two communities, he unwittingly awakens a revolution when he is discovered in the lands of the Eternals. Connery’s enforcer costume is iconic and really sets the mood for this weird piece of 1970s science fiction. The Eternals inherited some strange ideas with regards to masculinity and sex. Seeing Sean in his thigh high boots, long braided hair, and red loincloth seems to throw it all for a loop most of them weren’t prepared for.  

Released the same year as Rear Window, this simpler and similar version of the story has Barbara Stanwyck as a woman who witnesses George Sanders murder another woman across the street from her window. Everyone, especially the cops, paints her as a stupid, delusional woman and things are made worse when the killer begins to torment her. Despite a bit of real hokeyness at the end, Stanwyck and Sanders are fantastic, especially in their scenes together.